BRIEFLY
»
Hector Barbera found
himself in embarrassing circumstance
after staying on in Jerez after the tests
for the sherry capital’s annual horse
fair – under arrest and then before
the courts. A late-night row in his
hotel room with his girlfriend got out of
control. First reports in Spain were that
his girlfriend had been hospitalised,
but these were not repeated, and the
court took a different view, handing out
a six-month suspended sentence to
both Barbera and his supposed victim.
“It was only an argument,” said the
aggrieved rider.
»
Kevin Schwantz to ride
again! Fresh from a war of words
with Alberto Puig over some ill-judged
comments about Dani Pedrosa, the
1993 world champion climbed the
heights of public acclaim again
with the news that he is to make an
international racing return almost
20 years after his retirement, at the
gruelling but nationally prestigious
Suzuka 8-Hour endurance race.
Schwantz will ride with Japanese
ex-GP and World Superbike racers
Yukio Kagayama and Nori Haga, riding
a Suzuki in a team owned by Kagayama.
The news sparked immediate
rumours that Rossi and Cal Crutchlow
will also do the race, so far denied by
both riders, if half-heartedly.
The 8-Hour used to be a regular stop
for GP racers, but fell away because of
the danger of injury and/or exhaustion
in the middle of the championship.
»
The BMW prize for this
year’s top qualifier – a specced-up M6
coupe – was put into proportion by
current leader Jorge Lorenzo, when
he was rather cloyingly asked about
whether the prize gave extra aincentive.
“To tell the truth, if you win a grand prix
then you can buy a new car,” he said
MOTOGP >>> NEWS
The general reaction among riders to
Marquez’s merciless attack on Jorge
Lorenzo was of admiring approval.
But Jorge’s long-standing rival Dani
Pedrosa has sounded a note of caution
to his pushy new team-mate.
Marc had relied on the collision to slow
him down, according to the race winner:
“If they did not touch Marc would have
run out of track,” Pedrosa told the official
motogp.com website.
“So [it] means he was a little too late on
the brakes.”
It was similar to what Marquez had
done to him, he continued, in the first
corner at Austin, but “I would have time
to see him coming.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t happen in the
next one.”
Pedrosa and even Lorenzo agreed with
the majority on one other point: that the
beaten Yamaha rider should not have left
the door open:
“I did not expect him to be so close,
after his mistake before,” he admitted.
(Marquez had pushed past at the far
hairpin, only to run wide and lose the
lead at once.)
For other riders the move was hard
but fair, given the circumstances. Rossi
summed it up: “Last lap, last corner, two
great champions ... I wish I had been
faster, then maybe it could have been
three at the last corner.”
New- last-year race director Mike
Webb indirectly affirmed a principle
controversially espoused by his
predecessor Paul Butler: that bike racing
is a contact sport. The four-man Race
Direction committee had been quite
clear, he said. “Our opinion is pretty
obvious in that we didn’t do anything.
We considered it and looked at it from a
number of camera angles, but all four of
us agreed it was a racing incident. If it
was free practice there would have been
penalties, but it was the last lap of the
race,” he told GPWEEK.
Lorenzo had called in to argue the
opposite case, but there had been no
official protest from the team.
Marquez escaped becoming the first
MotoGP rider to incur penalty points on
his licence, but doubtless the officials –
and his rivals – will be keeping a close
eye for any repeat of his Moto2 tactics.
Footnote: Lorenzo issued a veiled
threat to Marquez in an inter view
with Britain’s MCN. “Maybe this
will improve me as a rider, and I will
be more aggressive like I was in
250s. Let’s see what happens in the
future.” Lorenzo was notorious in the
250 class for hard riding, and was
suspended for a race for knocking
another rider off.
“IT MUSTN’T
HAPPEN AGAIN”
Dani Pedrosa on Marquez’s last-corner move
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GPWEEK.com // 4
GPWEEK.com //
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